The Great­est: Antoine Fuqua on Den­zel Washington

Back in Feb­ru­ary 1998, Pre­mière mag­a­zine ran a cov­er sto­ry about com­mer­cial direc­tors who had suc­cess­ful­ly moved into movies. A group shot of Michael Bay, David Finch­er, Simon West, Dominic Sena and Antoine Fuqua was accom­pa­nied by the some­what hyper­bol­ic head­line: ​‘Do these men rep­re­sent the future of Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ing – or the death of it?’

Link­ing them was the now defunct Pro­pa­gan­da Films, which pro­duced, among oth­er titles, Bay’s Armaged­don, Fincher’s The Game, West’s Con Air, Sena’s Gone in Six­ty Sec­onds and Fuqua’s The Replace­ment Killers. Some months lat­er, Paulet­ta Wash­ing­ton remem­bered the mag­a­zine cov­er and showed it to her hus­band around the time he and screen­writer David Ayer were search­ing for some­one to helm a project called Train­ing Day. She had seen The Replace­ment Killers and rec­om­mend­ed it to Den­zel, who was impressed enough to set up a meet­ing with Fuqua. Here, the direc­tor reflects on how his rela­tion­ship with The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en star blos­somed dur­ing that ini­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion, and offers his take on what makes Wash­ing­ton such an endur­ing, irre­sistible screen icon.

“I remem­ber my first day on set with Den­zel. By this point we had talked about the script [for Train­ing Day] a bunch of times, and I felt like we had a pret­ty good under­stand­ing of each oth­er. We were on the same wave­length in terms of where we want­ed to take the project. But when the rela­tion­ship was real­ly cement­ed for me was in the begin­ning, on the first day of film­ing. We were shoot­ing the scene in the din­er, and I walk over to Den­zel – and you have to remem­ber, I’d start­ed to feel like I knew the guy, but to me Den­zel is like Michael Jor­dan – and ask him if he wants to come over to look at the mon­i­tors. He goes, ​‘Well, you good?’ I go, ​‘Yeah,’ he goes, ​‘Great. I don’t need to see it then. Call me when you need me.’ And he walked away. Two things hap­pened in that moment: num­ber one, this guy trusts me; and num­ber two, this guy trusts me – don’t fuck it up. He puts so much trust into the direc­tor and it was inter­est­ing for me because he hon­est­ly didn’t look at the mon­i­tor, at all. He would just look to me at the end of each take and if I was hap­py that was good enough for him. Me and him were like two jazz musi­cians just riff­ing off each oth­er – and it remained that way through­out the entire movie.

Read more exclu­sive­ly inside LWLies 66: The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en issue

“Den­zel is dif­fer­ent. You can’t treat him like he’s just anoth­er actor because the truth is he’s not. You work with every­one dif­fer­ent­ly, of course, and you have dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ships with dif­fer­ent actors. The most impor­tant thing I learned when work­ing with Den­zel was to respect his process. He’s a very smart, thought­ful actor. I call him the log­ic mon­ster. If you don’t have a rea­son behind some­thing, Denzel’s not going to do it. He’ll chal­lenge you on things that he just doesn’t believe in, unless you have an expla­na­tion for it that makes sense and clicks. But he’s very giv­ing and open. He’s a great leader, some­one who leads from behind. Some­times I would watch him do that. The key thing was nev­er tying his hands. I always left room – both with­in the frame and with­in the frame­work – for him to find free­dom and try oth­er things. For exam­ple, the whole ​“King Kong ain’t got shit on me” thing – that part of the speech wasn’t writ­ten. I could see some­times where these things were going, or I could feel the ener­gy, and it was always impor­tant to feel like I was in tune with him so I could be where I need­ed to be with my cam­era once I’d set up the shot, to cap­ture what he’s giv­ing you. Because Den­zel will give you everything.

“We kept in touch after that, I’d see him at the house some­times or we’d go for din­ner. But it wasn’t until much lat­er that we got to work togeth­er again, on The Equal­iz­er. We had a great time mak­ing that movie togeth­er, and when MGM approached me with the idea of remak­ing The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en, Den­zel was the first per­son who came to mind. I read the script, and they real­ly did a good job in terms of get­ting all the DNA of the sto­ry in there. But when we start­ed going down the list of actors it felt like we were just going through the usu­al sus­pects. Now, I knew I want­ed Den­zel at this point, but I’d decid­ed to keep my cards close to my chest. I felt like it need­ed some­thing more, like the cast­ing had to be an event in itself.

“So we were hav­ing a meet­ing, the pro­duc­ers and I, and I said, ​‘What about Den­zel Wash­ing­ton? Den­zel would be amaz­ing on a horse…’ It was one of those moments where the room fell com­plete­ly silent. Even­tu­al­ly some­one said, ​‘Do you think you could get him to do it?’ Hon­est­ly, I had no idea, but I knew I could at least speak to him about it. So I arranged a lunch with him in New York and Den­zel, his daugh­ter and I met up and I pitched him the idea. He start­ed laugh­ing because he knows how much I love west­erns. Imme­di­ate­ly we talked about Sev­en Samu­rai, and I start­ed describ­ing to him how I saw it and he agreed to think about. So I knew there and then he was intrigued by the idea. He went away and read the script and then called me and said, ​‘Are MGM real­ly going to do this?’ and I said, ​‘Well, yeah…’

“Once he start­ed get­ting into it you could tell he was real­ly excit­ed. When he start­ed putting his guns and his hol­ster on, he wouldn’t take it off. He start­ed imme­di­ate­ly going and rid­ing hors­es and all that. It was amaz­ing. And I start­ed get­ting excit­ed about it because I realised how much I want­ed to see Den­zel on a horse. The thing for me is, the west has always been one way, it’s always had one look. I want­ed to chal­lenge that and do some­thing con­tem­po­rary, because I think that’s one of the issues with west­erns. I want­ed some­thing that looked and felt more diverse, like the world we live in today. He’ll always tell me in advance if there’s any­thing he wants to do with a char­ac­ter – on The Equal­iz­er, for exam­ple, he want­ed to shave his head. So we’d talk about that stuff and I would watch it evolve. The first thing we talked about on The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en was side­burns. We were at the May­weath­er-Pac­quiao fight in Vegas a cou­ple of years ago, and we dis­cussed the fact he want­ed to grow side­burns and how long they were going to be.

“Den­zel is a movie star. He doesn’t like that – he would rather be known as an actor’s actor, which is total­ly right because he loves the­atre and that’s where his heart is. Ask him about it and I guar­an­tee he’ll tell you that he’s an actor, and when he’s work­ing he’s a work­ing actor and when he’s not work­ing he’s an unem­ployed actor. It says a lot about who Den­zel is as a per­son, because you’ll nev­er see him wear­ing expen­sive watch­es or any­thing fan­cy. The whole flash Hol­ly­wood thing, that’s not him. He’s not in the busi­ness for that. He just loves act­ing. But the thing with Den­zel is, he’s a movie star. He’s tall, he’s pow­er­ful, he’s hand­some, he’s charm­ing, he’s high­ly intel­li­gent, he has this boom­ing voice and he has that deep, deep emo­tion as a per­son. And when he smiles he lights up the room. If you’re two rooms down and he starts laugh­ing you know it’s Den­zel. There’s not a lot of guys like that left, guys that have the full pack­age. He’s a true movie star in that sense. And anoth­er thing, my god, the cam­era loves him. There’s mag­ic you only see when you get to edit­ing room, these lit­tle things that you didn’t even notice on set. And that’s why you have to give him room to do his thing, because he’ll always give you more if you do.

“He’s also the guy that every­one likes. Men like him because he’s a guy that you can have a beer with, you feel like you can have a good laugh with. And women like him because… well, for pret­ty obvi­ous rea­son. And there’s a mys­tery to Den­zel because he’s remained true to who he is. He real­ly is just a reg­u­lar guy in many ways. You meet him and he’s in sweat­pants and ten­nis shoes. We meet each oth­er all the time in the morn­ing at the gym and he’ll box 9 – 10 rounds every­day. The thing that real­ly makes Den­zel great though, if I had to boil it down to one thing, is dis­ci­pline. He stud­ies his craft. He knows his his­to­ry. He has the skillset to deliv­er on the screen not by chance, but through the research he does and because of what he brings to the char­ac­ter. He’s like a great ath­lete in that sense. You look at some­one like Muhammed Ali… he hat­ed train­ing but he trained hard­er than any­body in order to get to the top of his game. Den­zel is a lot like that. You may not see it, but he does the hard yards.”

The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en is in cin­e­mas 23 September.